Spencer, MA (Town Center)

There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.

The neighbors in the Town Center neighborhood in Spencer are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 72.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.

A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.

In the Spencer Town Center neighborhood, 30.7% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 24.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (22.3%), and 22.2% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Spencer Town Center neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.5% of households. Some people also speak Polish (5.8%).

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.

In the Town Center neighborhood in Spencer, MA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (15.4%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (14.3%), and residents who report French Canadian roots (14.0%), and some of the residents are also of French ancestry (12.0%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (10.1%), among others.

Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in Spencer Town Center neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.3% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.

Here most residents (76.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (12.1%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.